tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6768495027896028196.post8288213619452269284..comments2018-02-13T15:00:39.263-05:00Comments on That's alls I know: Classic Doctor Who: ranked & reviewed (#30 - #21)Tommy Kraskerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12564935526936828636noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6768495027896028196.post-35938227047575561102018-01-19T11:02:05.090-05:002018-01-19T11:02:05.090-05:00&quot;The Awakening&quot; is the rare serial that,...&quot;The Awakening&quot; is the rare serial that, after Philip and I first watched (and loved) it, we went back and watched the whole thing again, this time with the DVD commentary -- we couldn&#39;t get enough of it. At the time, it seemed a perfect miniature: buoyant and infectious. When I wrote my very first blog entry, my four-part Peter Davison retrospective, that was my take on it. The most recent time I watched -- I guess about eight or nine months ago -- it seemed so relevant to our current political climate, I was dumbfounded. Some of the Fifth Doctor stories, of course, wear their political statements on their sleeves (e.g., &quot;Terminus,&quot; &quot;Warriors&quot;), and heaven knows, dozens upon dozens of Classic Who serials are allegorical in nature -- but I never would have expected to see such an apt evocation of our current political climate in &quot;The Awakening.&quot; Yet its tale of a madman who establishes authoritarian rule -- and the forces that arise to support him, indulge him or resist him -- feels like it could have been written today. Seeing the parallels has, for me, made the serial no less delightful, but doubly effective.Tommy Kraskerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12564935526936828636noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6768495027896028196.post-52447127330103128412018-01-18T17:52:08.191-05:002018-01-18T17:52:08.191-05:00Ah, The Awakening. Two episodes. Small but perfect...Ah, The Awakening. Two episodes. Small but perfectly formed. Denis Lill, so far over the top he&#39;s back down the other side. Polly James, sparking so well off Davison I just want her to leave with him at the end of the story and travel with him forever. A genuinely disturbing monster that still utterly works. Oh, it&#39;s just... lovely.Walter Dunlophttps://ladydontfallbackwards.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6768495027896028196.post-65083711693208709982018-01-17T11:16:42.973-05:002018-01-17T11:16:42.973-05:00I mentioned in my full &quot;Wheel in Space&quot; ...I mentioned in my full &quot;Wheel in Space&quot; essay -- but it didn&#39;t make it into my capsule review -- that I think one problem when watching the reconstruction is the limited telesnaps of the guest cast. It&#39;s a character-driven script that largely avoids histrionics, and I think when one sees those same shots of the guest cast over and over again in the reconstructions, it&#39;s easy to think that their performances (and characterizations) are fairly bland and unexceptional. But the last time I watched, I let the surviving episodes be my guide for how to judge the performances in the missing episodes, and came away with a very different impression. That&#39;s not to say you&#39;ll ever love &quot;Wheel&quot; -- as you said, you like the monster stories; they&#39;re not my favorites -- that&#39;s a very big difference between us. I veer more towards the character-driven stories, which is what I think &quot;Wheel&quot; is. And I think the characters are superbly drawn, and if you look at the standard for Cybermen stories -- &quot;Tomb&quot; or &quot;Earthshock,&quot; for example -- these characters (particularly, of course, Zoe, but also Gemma Corwyn and Jarvis Bennett) are so much richer. It&#39;s also got some of the easy, unforced scene work that I so love in something like &quot;Snakedance,&quot; where scenes just seem to unfold, the way they do in the theatre, and we&#39;re left to guess what dialogue is &quot;important&quot; and what&#39;s just &quot;conversation&quot; -- as opposed to the heightened faux-theatrics of much of &#39;60s television.Tommy Kraskerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12564935526936828636noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6768495027896028196.post-6001221538871307492018-01-16T16:28:23.100-05:002018-01-16T16:28:23.100-05:00I still cannot get behind your love for &#39;Wheel...I still cannot get behind your love for &#39;Wheel&#39; - I have tried, and it IS Whitaker, so it should be good, but...I simply can&#39;t love it. I think I find the Wheel crew generally less interesting than you do, and as a monster fetishist from childhood the feeble attempts to disguise the fact there are only two cybermen just make me sad (plus, the redesign is not especially effective). One day, perhaps, I&#39;ll watch it and finally catch on...tjpieraccinihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00536427543616664938noreply@blogger.com